Ferdinand VII of Spain

Ferdinand VII (October 14, 1784 - September 29, 1833) was King of Spain from 1813 to 1833.

Related Topics:
October 14 - 1784 - September 29 - 1833 - King of Spain - 1813

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The eldest son of Charles IV, king of Spain, and of his wife Maria Louisa of Parma, he was born in the vast palace of El Escorial near Madrid.

Related Topics:
Charles IV - Spain - El Escorial - Madrid

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The events with which he was connected were tragic and of the widest European interest. In his youth he occupied the painful position of an heir apparent who was jealously excluded from all share in government by his parents and the royal favorite Manuel de Godoy, his mother's lover. National discontent with a feeble government produced a revolution in 1805. In October 1807, Ferdinand was arrested for his complicity in the conspiracy of the Escorial in which liberal reformers aimed at securing the help of the emperor Napoleon. When the conspiracy was discovered, Ferdinand betrayed his associates and grovelled to his parents.

Related Topics:
Manuel de Godoy - 1805 - Conspiracy of the Escorial

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When his father's abdication was extorted by a popular riot at Aranjuez in March 1808, he ascended the throne but turned again to Napoleon, in the hope that the emperor would support him. He was in his turn forced to make an abdication and imprisoned in France for almost seven years at the Chateau of Valençay in the town of Valençay.

Related Topics:
Aranjuez - 1808 - Chateau of Valençay - Valençay

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In March 1814 the Allies returned him to Madrid. The Spanish people, blaming the liberal, enlightened policies of the francophiles (afrancesados) for incurring the Napoleonic occupation and the Peninsular War, at first welcomed Fernando. Ferdinand soon found that while Spain was fighting for independence in his name and while in his name juntas had governed in Spanish America, a new world had been born of foreign invasion and domestic revolution. Spain was no longer an absolute monarchy under the liberal Constitution of 1812. Ferdinand, in being restored to the throne, guaranteed the liberals that he would govern on the basis of the existing constitution, but, encouraged by conservatives backed by the Church hierarchy, he rejected the constitution within weeks (May 4) and arrested the liberal leaders (May 10), justifying his actions as rejecting a constitution made by the Cortes in his absence and without his consent. Thus he had come back to assert the Bourbon doctrine that the sovereign authority resided in his person only.

Related Topics:
1814 - Peninsular War - Junta - Constitution of 1812 - Cortes - Bourbon

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Meanwhile, the South American Wars of Independence were under way, though many of the republican rebels would quarrel among themselves and Royalist sentiment was strong in many areas. In the case of the forces led by Bolívar himself, his first permanent victory did not occur until 1817. The Manila galleons and tax revenues from the Spanish Empire were interrupted, and Spain was all but bankrupt.

Related Topics:
South American Wars of Independence - Royalist - Bolívar - 1817 - Manila galleon

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Ferdinand's restored autocracy was guided by a small camarilla of his favourites. He changed his ministers every few months, whimsical and ferocious by turns. The other autocratic powers of the Quintuple Alliance, though forced to support him as the representative of legitimacy in Spain, watched his proceedings with disgust and alarm. "The King," wrote Friedrich von Gentz to the hospodar Caradja on December 1, 1814, "himself enters the houses of his first ministers, arrests them, and hands them over to their cruel enemies"; and again, on January 14, 1815, "The king has so debased himself that he has become no more than the leading police agent and gaoler of his country."

Related Topics:
Quintuple Alliance - Friedrich von Gentz - Hospodar - December 1 - 1814 - January 14 - 1815

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As the Spanish king he was the head of the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece and in this capacity he made the Duke of Wellington the first Protestant member of the order.

Related Topics:
Order of the Golden Fleece - Duke of Wellington - Protestant

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